Aerial drone catches ice images at Holland State Park

Sunday

Jan 19, 2014 at 9:30 AM

By Jim.Hayden@hollandsentinel.com(616) 546-4275

The incoming cold and snow will make it tough to get a look at the ice building along the Lake Michigan shore, but a recent aerial video taken by a Hope College sophomore brings the shoreline spectacle to your warm living room.Jeff Zita used a small four-propeller drone to capture about 8 minutes of video of the expanding ice cover at Holland State Park on Jan. 12 — one of the few sunny days this month.“I thought I’d get some awesome shots of Big Red and the ice,” Zita said.The images at http://bit.ly/1kHwThV show the channel from the Macatawa River to Lake Michigan filled with pock-marked ice, lined by thick white piers with huge sheets of ice on the calm lake waters.“It gives some different perspectives,” he said.That icy view will be hanging around for several weeks, according to the National Weather Service in Grand Rapids. Colder-than-average temperatures are expected to increase ice on the Big Lake.Ice cover on Lake Michigan has been low for several years, according to charts from the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Ice cover has been less than 50 percent since 2009. About 90 percent of the lake had ice cover in 1977 and 1979 and again in 1994, the peak of ice cover in the past 20 years.Ice coverage was about 14 percent of Lake Michigan on Friday, according to GLERL data.For the entire Great Lakes, 1979 had the maximum ice coverage on record with 94.7 percent of water covered with ice. In 2012, coverage was 12.9 percent.The GLERL projection for 2013-2014 is for 57-62 percent of the Great Lakes to be covered with ice.The ice is good for lake levels, which have been recovering from a record low hit in 2013. The ice keeps water from evaporating in the spring, and water temperatures lower to stem further evaporation.The recent ice photo exercise was only the second time out for the drone, a DJI Phantom 2, that Zita purchased to enhance his photography hobby. The drone does not come with the camera.Zita first used it to shoot night images at Hope College earlier in January. The college posted the Instagram image on its Facebook page.The drone without its four propellers is small enough to fit in a backpack. It has GPS that keeps it on course, a gyroscope to keep the camera steady and can be controlled from an iPhone. The machine automatically adjusts for wind speed so it can stay stable at one point in the sky.The day Zita shot the ice images at the state park, winds were about 15 mph.The drone can fly for 25 minutes on battery power.“I like cool gadgets,” the mechanical engineering student said.He also loves spending time outdoors, from sailing to kite boarding.The 19-year-old is not sure what the next video will focus on, though Zita is thinking about heading to Laketown Beach for more shots of the lakeshore and dunes.“Living in West Michigan, there are countless places I want to go,” he said.— Follow Jim Hayden on Twitter@SentinelJim.